I have a DVD I made with some tv episodes on it and it plays just fine on all my players.

But I here at my parents house, I have a PS3 and a Sony BDP-S470. I cannot play .iso files on either one as they are not supported. But I am wondering if there is a way I can create a 4GB .mp4 file (for going onto a FAT32 HDD which is needed for these players to recognize it), but create a big .mp4 file that has all the menus and episodes and everything so that it's like having an .iso, but inside an .mp4 or .m2ts container that these players will pick up. I would prefer the .m2ts as I can then keep AC3 5.1 on all my other rips as well.

I have been ripping my Blu Ray collection and all my DVDs onto a 1TB external HDD for backup reasons, and I have a ton of stuff, so I can't really leave it uncompressed or it takes up almost my entire drive, then I have no longevity if I want to buy more movies and back them up to the drive.

Thanks.

The only way I might be able to do this is to rip each episode individually. But if there's a way I can just keep em all in one giant file the way I can with an .iso, that would be preferred.

Have been thinking of getting a WDTV Live also, as I understand it plays pretty much any format with ease.

@ hogger129 , This won't help you with a .mp4 & I haven't worked but a little with.m2ts . I use DVDShrink to seperate TV episodes into a DVD the way I want them . Then create a menu with TitleWriter. That might help you get those the way you want them before creating an .mp4.

I have a couple of programs I'm going to try this with . If I like the results I will post what I used.

Anyway, I have decided to go get the WDTV Live. Just reviewing the capabilities, it reads from NTFS drives and is pretty flexible with formats, and plays .iso files, so I think this piece of equipment is just what I'm looking for. Pretty much all of my backups are either .iso or .mkv and AC3 5.1 audio across the board.

I don't understand why Sony makes it so their Blu Ray players only read FAT32 drives or need specific file formats. I looked around on Best Buy's website at some other Blu Ray players, too, and I notice that even LG has models which read NTFS drives and are pretty flexible about what file formats will play. I mainly was interested about this because I wanted to create a FAT32 drive with all my backups that would play from my parents' Blu Ray player in the basement which is hooked up to a nice, big HDTV. I guess I know what not to buy for a Blu Ray player when I get my own place.

I would stream to my PS3 using something like PS3 Media Server, but I don't have a very strong internet connection here, and from what I hear, PS3 doesn't stream 1080 very well.

So I got the WDTV Live this morning, and have just been playing around with it all day. I really like this thing. Plays all my backups just fine.

The only things negative I'd have to say about it are that it gets hot easily, so I had to turn it on its side with the power end up to keep the heat off the rest of the unit. Seems to be working.

Also, I have been reviewing some of the WDTV forums that say it doesn't play DTS-HD (7.1 and 6.1) even if you have them hooked up to a receiver. But it does play the core DTS 5.1 just fine. I don't have mine hooked up to a receiver, so it just downmixes to DTS 2.0, which I guess is stereo.

This thing beats the PS3 or Sony's stuff by a long shot if you ask me. They need to get with the times and make their stuff NTFS compatible and be able to read all the formats that the competition can.

Update: I'm actually having a LOT of luck in creating EXCELLENT quality .mkv files to playback on my PC and WDTV Live. I am just running my stuff through DVDFab, ripping it into a DVD9 1080p folder, and then running that through MakeMKV and ending up with ~5GB files and they look great. Mostly doing this so I can keep the DTS core audio. They look great though.

Update: I'm actually having a LOT of luck in creating EXCELLENT quality .mkv files to playback on my PC and WDTV Live. I am just running my stuff through DVDFab, ripping it into a DVD9 1080p folder, and then running that through MakeMKV and ending up with ~5GB files and they look great. Mostly doing this so I can keep the DTS core audio. They look great though.

That's great to hear.

I've nothing but positive comments about those WDTV Live units so I'd expect them to be very good.

I've nothing but positive comments about those WDTV Live units so I'd expect them to be very good.

Wombler

Only problem is MakeMKV only seems to want to work with h.264 stuff, so I guess I'll just have to re-encode to .mkv first and then drop it in there and let it reduce the file size. Kinda nice I can make full 1080p stuff with DTS core audio in ~5GB.